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Who really said it

The rocket worked perfectly, except for landing on the wrong planet

His own line — but written down in 1956, not said in 1944 Wernher von Braun 1912–1977 · German-American rocket engineer
Attributed In copyright

The sentiment is genuinely von Braun’s and it is in print under his name — in ‘Reminiscences of German Rocketry’, Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, vol. 15 no. 3, May–June 1956, which carries the sub-heading ‘Did we land on the wrong planet?’ Two things follow. It is a recollection written about twelve years after the event, not a remark anyone recorded on the night of 8 September 1944. And the article is credited ‘as told to Henry J. White,’ so even the 1956 phrasing may be a collaborator’s.

Last verified 21 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“The rocket worked perfectly, except for landing on the wrong planet” Wernher von Braun, 'Reminiscences of German Rocketry', Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, May–June 1956. A recollection written a dozen years after the event, not a wartime remark.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright. A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Wernher von Braun — German-American rocket engineer. Theme: "The rocket worked perfectly, except for landing on the wrong planet". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "The rocket worked perfectly, except for landing on the wrong planet". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Article
Reminiscences of German Rocketry
Published
Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, vol. 15 no. 3, May–June 1956
Sub-heading
‘Did we land on the wrong planet?’
Byline
Wernher von Braun, as told to Henry J. White

Did we land on the wrong planet? JBIS, May–June 1956

The sub-heading as printed in 1956 — the oldest form of the line we can point at. Note that it is a question, not the neat declarative sentence that circulates. And note who is asking it: a man safely in America, writing for a British audience, about rockets he built with concentration-camp labour that killed thousands of British civilians.

Skeptics SE — tracing the line to the 1956 JBIS article

How we traced it

  • The popular sentence — ‘The rocket worked perfectly, except for landing on the wrong planet’ — is usually presented as a remark von Braun made to a colleague the night the first V-2s struck London, 8 September 1944. No wartime source for it has ever been produced.
  • What does exist is his own account. German biographers of von Braun (Ulli Kulke, Johannes Weyer among them) place the statement in 1956, more than ten years after the fact, and the trail runs to his article in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, vol. 15 no. 3, May–June 1956, pp. 125–145, sub-headed ‘Did we land on the wrong planet?’ the investigation ↗.
  • The byline is the second catch: the piece is presented as von Braun’s story ‘as told to Henry J. White,’ and is described elsewhere as a heavily edited version of his manuscript on German rocket development. The idea is his; the exact words may be an editor’s.
  • The polished one-sentence form most people quote is carried by later secondary works — Wikiquote cites Jonathan Allday’s Apollo in Perspective (1999), p. 85, which frames it as a 1944 remark. We have found no earlier printing of that sentence, and no wartime witness the sourced entry ↗.
In copyright

In copyright. Von Braun died in 1977, so his writings remain protected in the UK and EU until 2048; the 1956 article is additionally a journal publication with its own rights, and it carries a second contributor, Henry J. White. Quote the sentence with attribution as commentary and criticism — do not lift the article, and do not treat it as free stock text. This is not legal advice.

Fact-check

The attribution problem

Nobody else is competing for this one. The problem is the date and the framing: a line written for a British spaceflight journal in peacetime keeps being retold as something overheard in a bunker in 1944.

1956, not 1944 retrospective

This is the whole point. A remark made on the night London was first hit would be evidence of what von Braun felt at the time. A sentence composed twelve years later, for publication, in a country he had since adopted, is a piece of self-presentation. Both can be sincere; they are not the same kind of document the dating ↗.

The 1956 text asks a question polished later

The JBIS sub-heading is ‘Did we land on the wrong planet?’ The tidy declarative sentence everyone quotes appears in later retellings; Wikiquote sources it to a 1999 book. Somewhere between the two, a rueful question became a punchline.

‘As told to Henry J. White’ collaborator

The article is not a manuscript von Braun typed himself. It is his account, worked up by a writer — and reportedly a heavily edited version of a longer memoir. So even the 1956 phrasing cannot safely be called verbatim von Braun.

British spaceflight enthusiasts context

He was addressing the very country his rockets had bombed, in the journal of its interplanetary society, at the moment he was becoming America’s public face of space. The joke is doing diplomatic work, and reading it as a spontaneous 1944 aside misses that entirely.

His own words in substance, and in print under his name — but from a 1956 magazine article, not from the war. There is no 1944 source for it the sourced entry ↗.

Context

Why it resonates

It is the perfect engineer’s joke: the machine met spec, the target was simply wrong. Everyone who has shipped something that worked beautifully and pointlessly recognises it instantly, which is why it turns up in conference talks that have nothing to do with rockets.

It is also the most efficient possible act of distancing. In fourteen words the speaker becomes a man whose beautiful device was pointed in a regrettable direction by other people. That is a great deal of work for one sentence to do, and it is worth noticing that he wrote it after the war, not during it.

The 1956 text is a question. The version everyone quotes is a punchline.

The timeline that matters

8 September 1944: the first V-2s strike London and Paris. Roughly 3,000 of the rockets are fired before the war ends.

1945: von Braun surrenders to American forces and is brought to the United States under Operation Paperclip.

May–June 1956: ‘Reminiscences of German Rocketry’ appears in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, sub-headed ‘Did we land on the wrong planet?’

1960s: he directs the Marshall Space Flight Center and the Saturn V programme.

1999: Jonathan Allday’s Apollo in Perspective carries the polished sentence, framed as a 1944 remark — the form the internet inherited.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Purpose Truth

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Did von Braun say 'The rocket worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet'?skeptics.stackexchange.com

The thread that dates the statement to 1956 and finds the JBIS sub-heading behind it.
Wernher von Braun — sourced quotationsen.wikiquote.org

Carries the polished sentence, sourced to a 1999 secondary work rather than to anything from 1944.
V-2 rocketen.wikipedia.org

The weapon in question, including the first operational strikes on London on 8 September 1944.
Wernher von Braunen.wikipedia.org

The full career, Peenemünde and Mittelwerk included — the context the quip is usually quoted without.

The author

About Wernher von Braun

Wernher von Braun

1912–1977 · German-American rocket engineer

Wernher von Braun (1912–1977) designed the V-2 for Nazi Germany, was brought to the United States under Operation Paperclip, and went on to build the Saturn V that carried Apollo to the Moon. He was also an exceptionally skilled communicator about his own past — Disney television, magazine serials, memoirs — and this line is a small piece of that work: a way of saying the war years were a detour from the real project. The V-2 was assembled by prisoners at Mittelwerk, where more people died building the rockets than were killed by them.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

von Braun, Wernher, as told to Henry J. White. “Reminiscences of German Rocketry.” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, vol. 15, no. 3 (May–June 1956), pp. 125–145.

MLA (9th ed.)

von Braun, Wernher. “Reminiscences of German Rocketry.” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, vol. 15, no. 3, 1956, pp. 125–45.

APA (7th ed.)

von Braun, W. (1956). Reminiscences of German rocketry. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 15(3), 125–145.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The rocket worked perfectly, except for landing on the wrong planet’?” Last verified 21 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-rocket-worked-perfectly-except-for-landing-on-the-wrong

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